The Limits of Reciprocity in Relational Justice

Proponents of private law as a normatively distinct legal institution, including the influential Toronto School, assert that private law is an end in itself because it is uniquely suited to support the individual as the driver of their own destiny. In other words, private law should be understood as more than a mere instrument of public law’s broad utilitarian aim to serve the polity. Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman (“D&D”) are among these proponents. Yet, although D&D align themselves with the Toronto School to the extent that it “resist[s] the tendency of previous theorists to perceive private law as the continuation of public law by other means,” D&D proffer a unique view of private law’s orienting lodestar.